Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

In Dr. Ed’s Blog, Ed Yardeni, for 25 years one of the industry’s leading energy strategists, proposed on Wednesday that OPEC should consider going back to Plan A to fund members’ treasuries as Plan B clearly isn’t working:

Rather than [attempting to prop] up the price [of crude oil], maybe OPEC should sell as much of their oil as they can at lower prices to slow down the pace of technological innovation that may eventually put them out of business.

In what could spell the end of Uber (and by inference other digital information providers such as Lyft and Airbnb) in Europe, an advisor to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has recommended that the court treat Uber as a “transportation service” and not a digital information service.

Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, a Polish lawyer, whose opinion carries such great weight among the 15 judges making up the ECJ that they usually follow it, said on Thursday: “The Uber electronic platform, whilst innovative, falls within the field of transport. Uber can thus be required to obtain the necessary licenses and authorizations under national law.”

Translation: Uber must now look and act like Big Taxi. Drivers cannot be “amateurs” but

By declining to hear an appeal, the Supreme Court on Monday essentially declared that rules protecting the taxi cartel in Chicago were null and void, thus expanding passenger freedom. As an attorney with the Institute for Justice (IJ), which represented Chicago Uber driver Dan Burgess, explained: “Today’s decision makes clear what [IJ] has said for years. The Constitution does not require [city] governments to stick with outdated protectionist regulations in the face of technological innovation.”

When Uber and other ride-sharing companies entered the Chicago market several years ago, they soon became a thorn in the side of the taxi cartel that had operated under protectionist rules dating back to 1937. Those rules

Every year the South by Southwest (SxSW) conference held in Austin, Texas, in March celebrates one or more high-tech “breakout” companies. In 2007 it was Twitter, in 2011 it was GroupMe, and in 2015 it was Meerkat.

This was supposed to be Fasten and RideAustin’s year, two of the local ride-sharing companies that had allegedly “filled the void” when city council member Ann Kitchen ran off Uber and Lyft last year.

Thousands of attendees flew in for the conference, and they needed a lift (or Lyft) but

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, December 30, 2016:

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that 5,000 new jobs are being planned by Sprint in the United States, and another 3,000 jobs are being created here by a satellite venture company in Florida called OneWeb. Said Trump:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 15, 2016:

Donald Trump opened the gathering of high-tech industry executives on Wednesday, nearly all of whom vociferously opposed him during the presidential campaign, by calling them “a truly amazing group of people.” If any of them thought the meeting would be confrontational, they were disappointed.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 23, 2016:

Massachusetts is now the 35th state to regulate ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, but with a vengeance not seen elsewhere: A portion of a new 20-cent tax per ride will be used to fund improvements for the old taxi cartel.

First, the new tax is not called a “tax” but a “fee.” Second, the tax won’t be charged either to the driver or to his customer, but to the ride-sharing company itself. Third,

On Tuesday, during a hectic day of media interviews about the coming revolution being caused by autonomous vehicles (AVs), Ford’s CEO Mark Fields told Wall Street analysts that such vehicles “could have just as significant an impact on society as [Henry] Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago.” He told workers at a Ford plant in Palo Alto, “This is a transformational moment in our industry … it is a transformational moment in our company. We are making people’s lives better by changing the way the world moves.”

He said that his company’s foray begins with e-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft and will expand to the consumer market by 2021 if not sooner.

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, January 25, 2016:

Picture a factory where the owner has cut his Social Security and Medicare taxes by 90 percent. Where surveillance by the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) no longer exists. Where minimum wage laws don’t apply. Where there are no more reports to be filed with OSHA. Where the factory doesn’t have to be retrofitted to handle handicapped employees. Where there is no “family time” off for pregnancies. Where there are no pension or health care plans to fund. Where there are no unemployment insurance taxes. Where no one is demanding special break rooms and time off for prayers. Where Obamacare doesn’t apply. No transgender bathrooms. No lunchroom or recreational facilities.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 25, 2016:

Shenzhen Evenwin Precision Technology Company, located in China’s Pearl River Delta (dubbed “The World’s Workshop”), has nearly completed the first stage of turning its plant that produces mobile phone components into one of the world’s first nearly 100-percent robot-operated factories. According to the company’s chairman, Chen Xingai,

Last Wednesday Queens Supreme Court Justice Allan Weiss ruled that “e-hails” in New York City differ enough from physical hails of taxis to make them legal under the law. This sets back the taxi cartel and those funding it significantly in their battle to keep their turf to themselves. He wrote:

Passenger communications to Uber-type companies [whose drivers use their own cars] via a smartphone are not street hails, which are requests made by passengers standing on the street who gesture or make an utterance.

And then he issued a warning to the cartel about trying to use its high-priced medallions to protect them from innovation. New York taxicabs are operated by private companies and licensed by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). Only “medallion taxis,” those painted in distinctive yellow paint and regulated by the TLC, are permitted to pick up passengers in response to a street hail.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 19, 2015:

After reviewing 140 years of data in England and Wales, the consulting firm Deloitte just reported that technology has actually created more jobs than it has destroyed. Because new technology has reduced greatly the costs of common staples such as food, household goods, and transportation, consumers have been increasing their spending elsewhere. Deloitte calls new technology a “great job-creating machine,” adding:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 5, 2015:

Lending Club headquarters in Redwood City, California.

According to the Financial Times — referring to the “gig” or contractor/freelance economy — the “new world of work is both more exciting and less secure.” And an increasing number of former employees are celebrating that new world by participating in it, leaving collectivists and statists gasping and wondering who will pay for the benefits they have promised if everyone starts working for himself?

The number of independent contractors is growing. And not just in the United States, either. London’s Financial Times reported earlier this week that

The “sharing” or “collaborative” economy — often derided by statist politicians as the “gig” economy — continues to explode with new applications, aided by the Internet, coming on stream almost daily.

A few are well known: Uber, Lyft (chairman in photo), and Airbnb. But others, such as Zaarly, TaskRabbit, and DogVacay, are expanding rapidly as well, thanks to the unique combination of individuals seeking flexibility, income, and opportunity without the confines of the corporate world, and thanks to the Internet. And it’s starting to drive those who would control everyone everywhere crazy.

Charles Cooke, at National Review Online, spelled out the reasons for the growth of the sharing economy using Uber as an example:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, July 17, 2015:

Mark Warner

Luddites used violence in their failing efforts to stall progress. Democrats are much more circumspect in their intentions. Writing in the Washington Post, ultra-liberal Democrat Mark Warner voiced his “concerns” about those seeking to make a living outside of corporate America in the “sharing” or “collaborative” economy:

Although the definition of “neo-Luddism” is a “movement of passive resistance to the … frightening technologies of the computer age,” in Paris the resistance is hardly passive. Last week taxi-drivers shut down entrances to and exits from the Charles De Gaulle International Airport, attacked cars driven by Uber drivers (including their passengers), overturned some of them, and set tires on fire. All this to express their frustration over how Uber is slowly, inexorably, putting them out of business. Since they were on strike, even when customers wanted a ride, the cartel members turned them down. After all, they were on strike! (Shown above are passengers toting their own luggage away from De Gaulle airport.)

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was one of the first to react to the report just released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Friday. She was so quick to comment that there was suspicion she had had no chance to read it. When the details behind the report came out, that suspicion was confirmed.

The House member most responsible for garnering the 219 votes needed in the House in March 2010 to pass ObamaCare – the Affordable Care Act, or ACA – is remembered for her comment made during a 20-minute speech just prior to passage:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, June 19, 2015:

Franz Kafka, author of the chilling novel, The Trial, in 1926

In The Trial, Franz Kafka told the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Left unfinished at his death, a ghostwriter completed the novel, which became one of Kafka’s best known and most frightening novels.

In it, Kafka described perfectly the ruling announced on Wednesday by the hidden anonymous commissars of the Federal Communications Commission:

In its ruling adopted on June 3 and released for public viewing on June 17, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), chaired by Tom Wheeler (pictured), announced that it was not only fining AT&T $100 million for violating its so-called “transparency rule” but also was going to mandate that AT&T install numerous “requirements to bring AT&T into compliance” with that rule.

At issue was AT&T’s repeatedly stated policy that at certain times and under certain specifically stated circumstances, subscribers to its “unlimited” data services would experience a slowdown (called either “congestion” by its supporters or “throttling” by its enemies such as Consumers Union) in connectivity. AT&T bent over backwards to make sure that every one of its customers was aware of the possibility, including

This article was published by the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, June 17, 2015:

Glock 17

Schumpeter’s Gale is the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” Often credited with first developing this first axiom of the free market, Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter was merely expanding on Karl Marx’s hopeful prediction that capitalism would eventually destroy itself. Out of the ashes would rise communism.